We are closing out the second quarter, and unless you were in a coma or you chose not to look at your retirement account monthly statement, to find that we may have only two up weeks for equities.
I will say though that last week at least stopped the bleeding and we aren’t on life support.
You may, however, need some rehab to resuscitate your plans for early retirement due to your equities portfolio.
I would say that the daily news form the world and politics at least distracts from the concern about savings.
I won’t get into all of the concerns voiced nationally about a variety of political subjects as it serves no purpose for this column.
I am interested however as to how we logically move our country from a reliance on fossil fuels to alternatives.
I hope we have open conversations about the impacts we make on the economy.
Many will suggest that the economy be damned.
There was some of that thought in how we dealt with the pandemic. It takes a balanced approach with each side listening.
There is much that could be done currently to eliminate the loss of methane into the atmosphere from such things as leaks and flaring.
The thought that we can just switch overnight has no real reflection of what it takes to support our power grid, much less the transportation to get products to the market.
It pains me that we as a country completely turned our backs on nuclear and that boat has sailed, given the time it takes to bring plants on line.
Open conversation and listening is essential to solving this dilemma.
So while we wait for our elected officials to make our lives better what is the course of action to take?
I suggest that we are already in a recession and haven’t hit the bottom yet.
I would say that if you missed a chance to buy into quality companies like Amazon and Google before, dipping your toe into the water to get on board might be an interim solution.
My belief that we have not seen the worst rests in years of watching the Federal Reserve make mistake after mistake.
Hoping for a soft landing is fine, but history is not on your side.
I think that most of the current attention is focused on issues other than the economy but that won’t last.
Shrinking savings will get everyone’s attention.
The old expression is that a recession occurs when you are in worst shape than your neighbor. Inflation has not gone away, supply and labor shortages are significant.
The Fed has no tools left but to increase rates and hopefully our government will figure out that you can’t spend or leverage yourself out of a bad situation. These things take time.
On the positive side, our economy may be a bit sluggish but it is far from stagnant.
I believe we will come out of this fairly easily over the next six to nine months.
The only problem in this new world is that we have no long-term vision or patience.
